Alpinism is a style of mountaineering which focuses on "light and fast" climbs using few camps and limited equipment. This is in contrast to "expedition-style" climbs where numerous camps are set up, larger amounts of gear are brought in, and ropes are sometimes fixed.

There is no strict rule in this subreddit as to the type of content allowed. Stories about expeditions on Denali or Everest are fine. Questions from n00bs about how to start out in the sport or what kind of gear is best are fine as well.

Be civil to each other, don't spam, and have fun!

If you have suggestions regarding the content and direction of the subreddit, drop a comment in here perhaps.

What i don't understand is how they make sure they're actually gonna glide as far as they need to. That one dude was suuuuuuuper close to the ground at one point before the mountain dropped off. It looked like he was maybe 30 feet above the ski slope. It seems insane to try to calculate whether or not you can make it over from what you know about yr speed and ave gliding distance beforehand; it's such a small margin of error.

1) As you observed they are flying in a slope. That is a keen observation - most people assume that thee pilots are flying perfectly horizontal which is not possible due to physics. :)

2) The pilots are not flying at maximum glide. So they are deliberately going steeper to get closer to the ground. In this case they can bail out at any time by flying more forward (out from the slope) instead of down slicking the slope.

One thing that is very cool with this video that may not be obvious is that, at the altitude, the air is very thin (which should be no news to anyone in /r/alpinism :)) but that impacts flying performance rather badly. However in spite of this and that the "rock drop" is just above 100 meters, these suits start to fly almost instantly. I think that is super cool.

Disclaimer: I do wingsuit BASE jumping (though not as spectacular as these guys).

Ah cool thanks. That makes sense. I had always just assumed that the wingsuits would provide such little lift that any WSBASEJer would need to be flying at max glide 100% of the time. Cool to know that they don't.

Anyway, do you do calculations before you jump that take in to account topography and air thickness/maximum glide?

By the way, what is maximum glide? How many horizontal feet do you gain from one foot of drop?